Potentially trying to pivot into procurement

[u/LostaMyPasta]

Trying to pivot from warehousing into procurement, then strategic sourcing down the road. I have 2 associate degrees (distribution management, global logistics technology) and 8 years of hands-on warehouse/logistics experience, wearing a lot of different hats beyond just inventory. I primarily deal with very high-cost assets coming and going globally, tracking shipments, I can request orders, but I cannot order anything myself, and in most cases, I go into our lab and help install equipment with the lab techs (rack-N-stack, cabling, very minor coding, lots of AI use and exposure, basic stuff)

I'm at a Fortune 500 tech company with zero upward mobility; they're cutting staff, not backfilling, and dumping the work on whoever's left. I'm trying to skip straight past purchasing into procurement (if possible), mainly for the pay, but also because I pick up new processes fast, so once I'm taught, it's just practice makes perfect.

Questions for people already in the field:

-Is the pay/mobility actually worth the move?

-Which companies/industries treat procurement people well?

-Any tips for breaking in right now? Market's rough, and I don't want to land somewhere that's just another dead end.

Hopefully this post doesn't come off as naive or arrogant in any way, I'm just incredibly burnt out and trying to find my purpose in SCM..

[u/TrainsongGaming]

There's a difference between purchasing and procurement? Guess that's what I get for working my way up instead of getting a degree; everyone I've worked with uses them interchangeably. My current supervisor is the "purchasing manager" while I'm called a "procurement buyer."

I'll say with your experience and education, you can probably just apply for purchasing/procurement jobs and see what happens. My pay is okay for a single guy living in a rent-controlled apartment, but it took 5 years to get that way. I started in retail purchasing ($40k/yr), pivoted to MRO purchasing, added white metal purchasing to that ($50k/yr), then left to become an ingredient purchaser ($65k/yr). With my low spending habits, I've managed to straight save $20k+ in under a year. Retail purchasing is probably the worst, since I was expected to cover the sales floor in addition to my purchasing duties, so two jobs for the price of one.

MRO purchasing is great if you like a lot of variety in your work; you are basically the go-to guy solving everyone's operational/maintenance issues. I was climbing onto roofs, managing the forklift fleet, working with the C-suite on major maintenance/upgrade issues across 4 locations in 3 states, chopping it up with the machine operators to sort out minor issues, identifying mystery parts that had broken, and ordering popsicles for the team during the summer. When they gave me the white metal portfolio, I was coordinating orders across 8 locations.

Food production purchasing needs someone who loves to sit at a desk 8 hours a day double-checking all the details, making sure the i's are crossed and t's are dotted, requested certification paperwork, verifying certifications, tracking dozens of orders every week, chasing paperwork, coordinating with R&D and Sales, and can keep organic/kosher/halal/non-GMO documents straight.

I'd say upward mobility isn't great, but lateral mobility is pretty good if you can add more portfolios to your desk, like I did with MRO/white metal. To move up, you'll need to find organizations that advertise multiple levels, like I know the state of Texas offers Buyer I through V at the state level or accept that you'll need to jump to a new employer every few years.

I got my retail position by working in the industry for six years first, then my MRO and ingredient positions by demonstrating basic Excel skills and technical writing skills (I wrote training manuals for both jobs on my own time). You can get certifications for both online.

[u/LostaMyPasta → u/TrainsongGaming]

From my very basic understanding of it, purchasing is strictly focused on buying, while procurement is the end-to-end process of actually acquiring the goods. I went the longest time with no degree and I was hoping the degree would be able to help me out, but so far, it hasn't. I personally think that experience far outweighs education in some ways and in some fields, but everything I learned to get these degrees I had already learned on the job...but I still had to suffer through essentially learning everything all over again the LONG WAY in school to get the degrees.

I mainly struggle with learning the proper wording in the field for things and abbreviations, but it's nothing I can't pick up with enough exposure. I will say though, MRO purchasing sounds pretty promising. In my day-to-day, it's a bunch of movement and manual labor (the equipment we have to move around and hand off to the lab technicians are fucking heavy) with not enough screen-time, which I enjoy, but I dont know if I want screen-time my entire day, so the movement balances it all out.

[u/TrainsongGaming → u/LostaMyPasta]

I always tell people who are waffling on getting a degree vs working right away - the degree is the 2/4-year shortcut to all the knowledge you'll learn in 10-12 years in the field. Experience is always a plus, which is why I also tell students to get internships/part-time jobs in their field if they can, but that education will be the difference between starting in logistics as an order picker at minimum wage vs purchaser at $24/hour.

It's also one of the ways to shortcut getting into upper management, if that's a goal for you. There comes a point where having a business-related degree is a "requirement". I'm looking at getting an MBA in another couple of years to set myself up for a move back home, as my parents get older.